Brighton First Responders seek volunteers

BRIGHTON — The Brighton Volunteer First Responder group was founded in 1982, with just shy of 20 members. Today, its roster is down to three, one of whom plans to retire and move to Winterset around the end of the year.

A small handful of new volunteers are currently training for the EMT credentials needed to answer calls, but cannot do so on their own until that training is complete.

A precarious future for the group has worrying implications for the community. In addition to paperwork needed by paramedics, the volunteers are trained to provide potentially lifesaving assistance in the minutes between the onset of any medical emergency and the arrival of a county ambulance dispatched from Washington. While they can’t administer most medications, they can perform CPR, use defibrillators, and provide other first aid.

“The ambulance takes a minimum of 15 minutes to get here,” said John Lynn, one of the group’s few remaining EMTs. “That can be life-threatening for a few of these, if they have a code or something like that, or if they get severely injured. It’s nice to have somebody show up, take charge of the situation, and render first aid, stuff like that.”

The reasons for the shrinking roster are multifaceted.

For one thing, Brighton is shrinking. The city’s population dropped by over a quarter in the last four decades, from 804 people in 1980 to an even 600 in 2020, according to U.S. Census data. And those who still live in town largely work in other communities during the day, or are too young or too old to answer emergency pages at every hour of the day imaginable.

“Brighton was a different town way back then,” he said. “Like most small towns, the businesses are all gone, we used to have a barbershop, used to have a grocery store, and everything else … Other towns are having problems, too. I don’t know if they’re as low as we are right now.”

The group gets roughly one call every three days, on average, according to Lynn. Their coverage area includes Brighton and a handful of nearby townships, including communities like West Chester, Coppock and Pleasant Plain.

Lynn said up to four more volunteers were training to become EMTs, some of whom will hopefully complete their coursework in the fall, although not all of them live in town.

That may not be enough to keep the QRS group running long-term. Lynn said he had some hope for a potential EMS property tax levy — which will go to voters in November — that may help pay for training and volunteer incentives, but he worries the change won’t be enough for Brighton to maintain its rapid-response team.

“It’s gloomy, as far as I’m concerned, I sure hope we get people,” he said. “Manpower’s our problem. There’s been a lot of talk about paying people to go on calls, I don’t think that’s enough unless you pay them really well to go on calls … And we already reimburse our students, when they pass [but] it’s quite a lengthy course.”

The service’s future can go one of two ways: it will find those volunteers, or it will stop existing.

Lynn said the group had pursued a handful of recruitment efforts, with limited success. It plans to hold an EMT appreciation event Sept. 20, at the HUB, a new community space next to city hall, where members plan on making an appeal for new recruits. They’ve made similar moves at other gatherings in recent years.

“It’s tough, to get somebody to say, ‘I’m going to get up in the middle of the night when it’s 20 below zero, it’s tough to do that, and I don’t blame them,” Lynn said. “It’s just tough to get volunteers, anymore.”

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